Philips Figures Out How to Make a Cheaper LED Bulb: Go Skinny

In design school in the '90s, they taught us that products about to become obsolete change their form factor to imitate their successors shortly before dying out. In other words, the lesson went, landline telephones would start to look like cell phones in a desperate attempt to stay relevant, and then they would disappear.

Twenty years later, we see an almost opposite phenomenon with LED bulbs, which have oddly tried to mimic the physical appearance, in broad strokes, of the incandescent bulb. But finally Philips has realized this is silly—and expensive, as LEDs occupying a lightbulb-sized volume require pricey heat sinks. Thus they've designed these cool, new SlimStyle LED bulbs.

They've got the efficiency you've come to expect from LEDs—a 60-watt equivalency wrung from just 10.5 watts—and because they're so skinny, and made from plastic rather than glass, the bulky heat sink can go away. That's good news for consumers' wallets, as the price-per-bulb has finally dropped below the $10 threshold. And yep, they're dimmable.

3 Comments

YAWN. Who cares? Most of us need at least 1600 lumens to power the single overhead fixture in our rooms. I don't have 27 60 watt equivalent lamps in my living room. I have ONE 100 watt equivalent lamp.
LED's aren't kicking CFL's out of my house anytime soon. I've been running 100% CFL since the early 1990's. Who cares about incandescents? I haven't bought them in over 20 years.
Start competing with CFL's and I'll sit up and take notice.

The reasoning provided for the lack of heatsink is not quite correct. The reason there is no obvious "heatsink" is likely a combination of increase heat tolerance in current LED chips and power supply components and the plastic housing providing a short thermal path from heat source to air.